Chown permission denied on owned dir

Question

I have following directory (/usr/local)

rwxr-xr-x. 43 root root  4096 Jul 25 14:19 .
rwxr-xr-x. 14 root root  4096 Feb 21 10:27 ..
rwxr-xr-x.  2 root root  4096 Jun 28  2011 bin
[...]
rwxr-xr-x   1 root root  8192 Jul 25 13:41 bad_dir
rwxr-xr-x.  4 root root  4096 Mar 28 11:56 good_dir

I am logged as root. When I run chown root:root good_dir everything is ok, but when I run chown root:root bad_dir I got chown: changing ownership of '/usr/local/bad_dir': Permission denied

What is wrong with bad_dir? What should I change to make chown working correctly? I see a dot in the end of permissions, but I don't know what does it mean.

Update

Running

echo 0 > /selinux/enforce
chmod 755 bad_dir

gives also chmod: changing permissions of 'bad_dir': Permission denied

Update 2

Output of ls -la /usr is

total 128
drwxr-xr-x.  14 root root  4096 Feb 21 10:27 .
dr-xr-xr-x.  24 root root  4096 May 28 08:22 ..
dr-xr-xr-x.   2 root root 28672 Jun 27 10:29 bin
drwxr-xr-x.   2 root root  4096 Jun 28  2011 etc
drwxr-xr-x.   2 root root  4096 Jun 28  2011 games
drwxr-xr-x.  36 root root  4096 Jul 23 14:04 include
dr-xr-xr-x.  12 root root  4096 Apr 11 17:10 lib
dr-xr-xr-x.  45 root root 36864 Jul 23 14:04 lib64
drwxr-xr-x.  14 root root  4096 Mar 28 11:58 libexec
drwxr-xr-x.  43 root root  4096 Jul 25 14:34 local
drwxr-xr-x.   3 root root  4096 Feb 21 10:27 man
dr-xr-xr-x.   2 root root 12288 Jul 23 14:04 sbin
drwxr-xr-x. 106 root root  4096 Mar 28 12:00 share
drwxr-xr-x.   4 root root  4096 Nov 20  2013 src
lrwxrwxrwx.   1 root root    10 Nov 20  2013 tmp -> ../var/tmp

@Garath, thanks. Also, could you please tell the output of ls -la /usr/local? — Ramesh, Jul 25 '14 at 12:42
@CristianCiupitu I got: lsattr: Inappropriate ioctl for device While reading flags — Piotr Stapp, Jul 25 '14 at 12:50
shorter version of the above would be df -hP /usr/local/bad_dir — Bratchley, Jul 25 '14 at 18:06

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

6

The directories need x permission to open. You can probably do,

chmod 755 bad_dir and then try your chown command.

According to here, the dot at end means,

According to ls.c (line 3785), . means an SELinux ACL. (+ means a general ACL.)

If it is SELinux messing, use setenforce to modify its mode. Run setenforce 0 to put SELinux in permissive mode and setenforce 1 to put it back into enforcing mode.

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

Community

1

answered Jul 25 '14 at 12:30

Ramesh

39,297

When I run chmod 755 bad_dir I got chmod: changing permissions of 'bad_dir': Permission denied – Piotr Stapp Jul 25 '14 at 12:36
@Garath, you should disable your selinux temporarily and then try. See my updated answer. – Ramesh Jul 25 '14 at 12:36
I doesnt' work. See my update – Piotr Stapp Jul 25 '14 at 12:39
@Garath: What's the output of command getenforce? Please run setenforce 0 and not echo 0 > /selinux/enforce. – Cyrus Jul 25 '14 at 16:42
Could you do a getfacl bad_dir ? Maybe it's just an ACL to fix :) – ludiegu Jul 26 '14 at 10:00

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 28 '14 at 07:13

I made a stupid mistake. We had few machines provisioned identically, but one (with this problem) was changed by one of my colleagues.

The bad_dir was mounted NFS, which explains all problems. Thanks to Joel Davis which suggest me to check this again I solved my issue.

Chown permission denied on owned dir

2 Answers2